American Romantic (13 page)

Harry took a step back, uncertain how to proceed. His vision was weak. When the guards began to shout, a middle-aged American appeared at the front door of the compound. He was brutish, heavy-bellied, swarthy, his eyes invisible behind thick-lensed sunglasses. He wore a sidearm. He stood, arms folded, his tight smile almost a snarl. The American came down the steps slowly, his irritation obvious now. He stood at the gate and said something Harry could not hear. The American moved his hands in a peremptory way. Then Harry was on the pavement, his feet suddenly turned to sand. A bicycle stopped inches from his head. A crowd began to gather, laughing and jostling one another. Harry looked at the white sky, remembering the last few feet of the long bridge when he thought he would surely sink into the swamp. He had no idea how he had survived it. Harry felt himself falling into a tangle of bicycle tires. His elbow hurt as he tried to rise, having no idea now where he was. He had been with a Chinese and now the Chinese was gone. Then the brutish American was bending over him, his face giving a look of pure amazement.

My God, Sergeant Orono said. It's you.

H
ARRY
was in a half-light of consciousness. His long sleep in the truck had not refreshed him. He felt as if he were drugged, in limbo, neither here nor there. The brutish American had taken charge, waving his pistol at the crowd that had gathered. His voice was loud, a threatening voice. This gave Harry no comfort. He had the idea he was now in a jungle of another kind, without protection. His head was on the pavement and he was looking at a bicycle tire and a sandaled foot and he wondered if the comrade captain had returned and he was somehow in the enemy's base camp, more useless conversation ahead. His mission, whatever it was, had failed and he himself was breaking down, running on empty, blood on his hands.

It took the director of USAID House an hour to find a local doctor. She did what she could, patching and stitching, but she had neither the skill nor the equipment to assess internal damage. Harry was unconscious and unresponsive. Meanwhile, Sergeant Orono made an urgent call to the embassy to let the ambassador know that Harry Sanders had turned up dazed and bleeding but more or less intact, very weak and not entirely lucid but not life-threatened either. That was the opinion of the local doctor. Harry himself was in no condition to offer explanations for his sudden appearance on the street in front of USAID House. What's this all about anyway? Sergeant Orono asked the ambassador's secretary. What's he doing here and where has he been? But the ambassador's secretary would not be drawn except to say that she would inform the ambassador at once. When she returned to the telephone she instructed Sergeant Orono to prepare Harry for the trip to the capital and to accompany him. A helicopter would be sent. He was to tell no one of this journey. He was not to mention Harry's name. Was that clear? Yes, ma'am, the sergeant said, but he thought it all most peculiar and below the line. Something not quite straight about it and the secretary spoke to him as if he were the hired help. He was not the secretary's property, he was the property of the U.S. Army. But Sergeant Orono was trained to follow orders, so he did as he was told, even if the order came from a civilian. He was fond of Harry Sanders. The young man had sand.

When the helicopter arrived in the capital the ambassador himself was on the tarmac. An ambulance was idling nearby, two nurses and a doctor on hand. The ambassador shook Sergeant Orono's hand and thanked him for his efforts. The military attaché was present also, standing a little apart from the others. The ambassador called him over to say he would write a report for the file, copy to the commander of U.S. forces; Sergeant Orono deserved a commendation. He said to the sergeant, Did Sanders say anything at all? No, the sergeant said, he was in pretty bad shape. The ambassador nodded and went away to supervise the offloading of Harry from the helicopter to the ambulance. In a few minutes they were all gone except for the military attaché, an aging lieutenant colonel who shook the sergeant's hand and said, Well done. Was it true that Sanders had said nothing? Yes, the sergeant said, can you tell me what this is all about? The attaché did not reply but raised his eyebrows in a gesture that said, unmistakably, Civilian fuck-up. The attaché seemed almost pleased at the turn of events. He left in a staff car and Sergeant Orono climbed back into the helicopter for the return flight south.

Harry woke up the next afternoon, still dazed. A tube led from his right arm to a bottle hanging from an aluminum stand. He grunted something and a nurse was at his side, asking how he was feeling. She gave him a cup of water and told him not to gulp it. He asked where he was and she said the name of the hospital. Harry recognized it, a private hospital near the port. He said, Is the German hospital ship gone? She said, My goodness yes, left two weeks ago at least. Harry went back to sleep, and when he woke two hours later the ambassador was in the room, sitting quietly in the chair next to the bed, reading a file. When he looked up and saw that Harry's eyes were open, he smiled warmly and patted him on the shoulder. Can you talk? Harry nodded weakly and reached for the water cup and drank some. The ambassador produced a Chesterfield, lit it, and held it to Harry's mouth. Harry nodded gratefully and took a long drag and coughed roughly once, and again. The ambassador snuffed the cigarette and waited until the coughing stopped.

He said, Thank God you're back. We've been terribly worried.

Harry mustered a smile and said, Me too.

Things went badly, the ambassador said, half question, half statement.

Harry nodded.

Did they mistreat you?

He did not reply right away. He said finally, Not really.

Any progress?

No progress.

You learned nothing from them?

Nothing, he said.

Nothing to report?

Nothing of value.

The ambassador sat thoughtfully a moment, making a note on the file. He said, Go back to sleep. When you're fit we can talk at length. I want to know the full story. You should be up and about in a week or so. They think you have a parasite. Not a serious parasite, they assure me. I decided not to inform your kin and now there's no reason to, at least not right away. We can discuss that later. The hospital staff has been told to admit no visitors. But I'll be by from time to time to see how you're getting on. Your feet are a mess. Did they tell you that?

No one had to tell me, Harry said. They both looked at his feet, swathed in bandages so that they looked twice their normal size. The ambassador said, You did a fine job. I'm proud of you. We all are.

Harry grimaced and turned his face. He said to the wall, Did it leak?

We contained the leak. The leak wasn't your fault. Get well. We'll talk when you get well.

Harry sat up suddenly and groaned. It's gone, sir.

Gone? What's gone?

Your compass. I'm sorry. I left it behind in my rucksack. It's in that damned hut. And the thousand U.S. That's gone too. How can I explain that to the auditors?

The ambassador laughed. Forget it. There's so much American money floating around this embassy that it might as well be a bank. The thousand U.S. is a drop in the bucket. Less than a drop.

My carelessness, Harry said.

Don't worry about it. After a pause, he said, What else?

I killed a man, Harry said.

Ambassador Earle did not reply, waiting for an explanation. When none came, he said mildly, How did that happen?

A boy came up behind me on the trail. He was militia. He had a carbine. I knocked him down, took the carbine, and shot him in the heart. He died at once.

Harry, the ambassador began.

He was only a kid.

In uniform?

Not a uniform that you or I would recognize. Khaki tunic, khaki trousers, no badge of rank. The carbine was probably one of ours, stolen.

Tell me all of it, the ambassador said.

Harry was sick of it, sick of the details and sick of the outcome, sick of thinking about him, his look of—he supposed the word was awe. He stared at the ceiling for long minutes, hoping the ambassador would give it up and wait for another day. But Basso Earle was a patient man, known for his endurance. Endurance became him. Harry stared at the ceiling and recited, in a thick voice, the facts of the matter, the long trek and pausing on the trail, the snapped twig that sounded like a pistol shot, turning to find the boy with the sullen face. Harry described the pain in his feet, rushing the boy and knocking him down, picking up the carbine and firing. His voice broke once but he gathered himself and continued. The carbine in the jungle, the boy dragged off the trail. Later he pushed a heavy vine to find not a vine but a snake coiling in the air, the snake's mouth wide open, its snow-white fangs—

Yes, I see, the ambassador said.

Harry was silent once again.

You killed him in self-defense.

Yes, Harry said.

Well, there's no doubt of that.

Do you want it in my report?

Ambassador Earle thought for a moment, the focus of his eyes somewhere in the middle distance. Yes, he said finally. Bare bones. Don't call him a boy. You don't know his age. Asians, it's difficult to know for certain.

Harry nodded listlessly.

Don't fret about this, Harry. You did what you had to do and thank God you did it, the ambassador said. He gave Harry's hand a squeeze and left the room. Later, the ambassador admitted that the interview had been exhausting. Punishing, really. When he left the hospital room he brushed by the nurse with a tray of food. He turned to say that she should pay special attention to Harry Sanders, who had been—heroic. Back at the embassy, he told his secretary that Harry looked like death twice warmed over but seemed to have his wits about him. He looks older. He's aged ten years and I'm afraid that his usefulness to this embassy is at an end. I'll find him a new posting, a good one. Harry was out of his depth. Maybe we all were. He lost my gold compass, the one I gave him for good luck. Can you imagine?

The poor boy, the secretary said.

Yes, the poor boy, the ambassador said.

 

The private hospital was known as the Singapore Sling, owing to a generous endowment by a Singapore businessman whose daughter, years before on a visit, had emergency surgery and against all odds survived. Harry laughed when he heard the story, thinking of the Connecticut Window at Église St.-Sylvestre. Supervision was lax, even negligent, at the Sling, and in the evenings all but nonexistent. One duty nurse looked after the twenty-five patients in the twenty-five rooms, fully occupied at all times. Everyone seemed to come and go as they pleased so long as they were ambulatory. Ambassador Basso Earle visited one more time and did not appear again, sending his secretary instead with an armful of books and American newspapers and magazines, a box of chocolates, a carton of Chesterfields, and a postcard from Harry's mother. His parents had flown to Barbados, spur of the moment. The secretary said the ambassador had been called back to the Department for consultations but would return soon. When Harry asked if anything was wrong, Marcia replied, Oh, no, it's the normal thing when there's a flap. But Harry was not reassured.

On the fourth night, bored to distraction, he decided to take a walk to the harbor. They had outfitted him with oversized slippers to accommodate the bandages on his feet. Harry used a cane because his feet hurt but gave it up after a block and sat on a sidewalk bench to wait for a taxi. He was breathing hard. Walking was a mistake, his balance was shot. In due course a taxi arrived and he asked to be taken to the port, quay number one. The quay was deserted, so quiet, not even a prostitute in sight. He sat on a piling at the water's edge reflecting on this nocturnal city that had become his home. Once he left it, he believed he would never return. He knew it better than any city in the world, knew its boulevards and alleys, its cafés and restaurants and churches, knew the Chinese quarter, knew the hotels and embassies and even the zoo and the golf course near the zoo. When he was older he would tell stories about the capital, its nightlife and working life, its mood flying from giddy to sinister and back again. There was romance, too, as in any wartime capital where the rules were flexible. The war zone conferred license, not on the epic merry-go-round of London during the blitz, perhaps because there was no blitz here. Danger was elsewhere, in the countryside, where if you made a false step you could be shot at close range and die without so much as a spot of blood. The capital would be well remembered by anyone who had been here—the heat, the sudden storms.

Harry watched a riverboat glide by, above it a brilliant parachute flare illuminating the river's far shore. Certainly he would tell stories about Village Number Five and the other places he had been, a long bridge to the back of beyond, the Singapore Sling, his villa with its silk-string hammock. The stories would not involve high diplomacy, George Kennan in Moscow or Belgrade, because there was no high diplomacy here. Perhaps low diplomacy, an unsuccessful mission into the swampy southern jungle, for example. Surely that mission would be forever classified, sealed away in a filing cabinet in a government warehouse, to be released in fifty years or not at all. Cities and their rivers cast shadows, and he knew that these would cast shadows as long as he lived, moments of truth so to speak. If Harry were an artist, the shadow would be Matisse falling on his hand at the upstroke. Harry watched a junk motor up the river, no running lights. The cargo would be contraband. In a short time, maybe as short as a year, the Americans would arrive in force and the city would change its spots once again, welcoming on the surface but something infernal beneath. The lights along the quay went out and the river was silent.

The junk disappeared around the bend of the river, barely visible in the darkness. Harry thought again of the zoo and its crippled elephant and toothless tiger. At least they were safe in the zoo. In the bush they wouldn't last the night. A prostitute stuck her head out a window and when Harry didn't wave she disappeared into the interior darkness. The sky was filled with stars, spoiled only a little by the winking lights of a jet aircraft high overhead. The café on the corner was empty, its doors closed. The taxi waited at the curb. He watched the river's current, sluggish as it worked its way to the sea, little eddies visible here and there, turbulence from mysterious underwater currents. He thought he would remember this moment for a very long time. He hailed the taxi.